


A Slice of Crybaby Pie

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Banter, Big Brother Dean, Broken Bones, Broken Sam, Brother Feels, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Castiel's Pimp-mobile, Concussions, Demon Dean, Demons, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Good Brother Sam Winchester, Hospitalization, Human Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Little Brothers, Mark of Cain, Season/Series 10, Serious Injuries, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam reflects on saving his brother. And not himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slice of Crybaby Pie

Sam crawled slowly across the asphalt toward Cas’s ridiculous pimp-mobile. At least the thing was easy to spot at a distance. He couldn’t get up, but couldn’t rest any weight on his right arm, so he shuffled awkwardly on his knees with his left arm held out for balance. His vision swam. Where was Cas? If he passed out from the pain in his shoulder before he reached the car…

He didn’t know how long it took him to get there. It felt like days. It seemed like a miracle that nothing attacked him in all that time, especially with three bodies, formerly possessed by demons, littering the basement of the abandoned house behind him. He’d been sure that first one knew something he wasn’t telling about Dean. If only those other two hadn’t shown up and broke the Devil’s Trap, so Sam had to kill them all… well, Cas had gotten one with his angel blade. Handy that those worked on demons, too, now that Cas’s smiting skills were currently at an ebb. 

If they weren’t so far outside of town, the cops would surely have come by now…

He remembered dragging himself into the driver’s seat. Then he was gone for a time.

He woke to the sound of Cas’s voice, sounding as human as he ever did. Even so, no one else sounded like that. There was something just a bit off, still, about the timbre, the words he chose. He seemed to be talking to a doctor, but it all seemed muffled and distant. 

“Sam. You’re awake.”

“Kind of… how did I get here, Cas?” 

“I drove you here,” said Cas, and as he appeared in Sam’s line of sight, he gave Sam an exaggerated look of warning, silently steering Sam away from certain questions. Even in a drugged haze, Sam knew what those questions were better than Cas did. “I tried to carry you in, but you are quite heavy. You needed a stretcher.”

“And two burly orderlies,” said a new voice. Without asking, which was just like a doctor, the man who appeared got all touchy-feely. Sam was shocked to find he was too weak to bat his hands away, then he remembered that he shouldn’t. He still felt bleary. He scowled when the doctor shone a light in his eye, but the doctor put a hand on his head so he couldn’t turn away.

“Is it broken, doctor?” Sam asked.

“Your shoulder? Yep, and then some,” said the doctor, far too cheerfully for Sam’s taste. “Your head’s a little broken, too. The concussion isn’t bad enough to postpone the surgery, though, so we’ll get you in as soon as we can.” 

Surgery? Shit. “Doc, I can’t. I have to…” He had to find Dean, was what he had to do. “…be somewhere,” Sam finished lamely.

“Yes, you do. The OR,” said the doc, and Sam was really starting to chafe at his annoying self-assurance. “Listen, man,” he continued in an I’m-gonna-level-with-you tone. What kind of doctor said ‘man’? “If you want to regain full use of your arm, you’ll do the surgery right away. This isn’t something you can just rub some dirt on and get right back up and play. What school do you play for, anyway?”

Sam didn’t even know what _sport_ he supposedly played. Also, did he still look young enough to pass for a college student? He felt middle-aged.

“Ummm… Michigan State,” he said, when Cas, who hovered nearby, didn’t say anything. He was pretty sure they were in Michigan; hadn’t they been through Flint yesterday? He hoped they were still close enough to make it plausible.

“Phew! Those guys are brutal,” said the doctor. “OK. We’re gonna look at the OR schedule and see if we can squeeze you in, tomorrow morning at the latest. You’d be in a lot of pain if we hadn’t given you morphine. Just rest for now. I’ll be back soon.”

“Cas,” said Sam, as soon as he had any reason to believe the guy was out of earshot. “I hate to ask, but is there any way you…” 

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Cas said immediately. He stood with his head hanging; he hadn’t moved while the doctor was talking. “I tried. I don’t… my grace isn’t… I tried to stop the demons, Sam! I had to go after them. Three more came in; I had to make sure they didn’t come after you—” He stopped speaking abruptly as a nurse bustled by.

“It’s OK, Cas,” Sam said gently after she had passed. “Guess I’m having surgery. Maybe you can drive me back to the Bunker afterwards.” He winced, surprised at how bitter and dismissive he sounded. He hadn’t meant it that way. He searched for a change of subject. “Why’d you say I played college football? I can’t pass for college-aged, Cas.” 

“I didn’t. I believe the doctor assumed that, which must mean he thinks you could be that age. And I didn’t say football. I said hockey. My understanding is that it is quite brutal, and could have resulted in the injuries you sustained.”

Sam, still bleary, recalled the large and burly demon who had leapt out of the Devil’s Trap when the other demon broke it. Yeah. He’d seen hockey games almost that brutal, he guessed. Even through the haze of drugs he felt a sick horror remembering how the bruiser had thrown him on his face, (he’d fought to stay conscious when his head hit the concrete floor) stood on his back, and _yanked_ his arm as if he were literally trying to tear it off. Maybe he had been. Sam assumed he was trying to get the demon knife, which he _had_ gotten in the end—in the neck.

Sam had thought it would be ironic if, with all things he’d survived, he died of suffocation with a 300-pound demon-corpse on top of him. He didn’t know how he wriggled free with a broken shoulder. If only Dean had been there to make a “full cowgirl” joke…

Dean. The pain of that was worse than a hundred demons trying to wrench off every limb. It was like they’d already succeeded, and he was lying on the ground dying while his brother laughed with black eyes…

No. Not his brother. Something that had taken his brother, and he would get him back. He would. He…

“Sam. Sam.” Cas’s voice brought him back. “They will take you into the OR now. I will…” But Sam didn’t hear what he would do. The angel had hold of his good arm, and Sam nearly panicked when he realized he couldn’t feel it. How had he missed the nurse who’d clearly just put more drugs into his IV? He’d been slipping away, and not into oblivion—into dreams of terror and terrible urgency. _Find Dean. Find Dean. Find Dean…_

He fought a thousand battles that day, before the haze of anesthesia lifted. He’d fought for Dean, and then fought Dean, and killed him, and resurrected him, and killed and resurrected himself.

* * *

Sam looked out, at the sun on the water, the sound of a jet-ski, the earth and trees and sea and nothing wrong. Not anymore. Everything right, even though it was a wrong, wrong world.

He absorbed Dean’s words, the teasing that had no idea, and Sam wanted him to have no idea. He smiled, glanced down at his sling, and said the expected thing.

“Dude, it was more than a sprain. All right? And it was a friggin' demon, but –”

“But what? That sling come with a slice of crybaby pie on the side? Please.”

The pain in his shoulder was healing. Other pains would never heal. The ligaments of his soul were torn to shreds by what he’d done, things he never dreamed he’d do, things always there behind his eyes when they closed.

Things he would do again that very moment, if it would bring Dean back. If it would save him. He was by his side now, and that was everything. So he drank beer, bantered, tried not to look at Dean’s arm when his sleeve rode up. He’d saved him. He had to believe that.

He remembered a time when he’d thought of saving himself. _Maybe I could be saved._

He no longer wondered.

The End


End file.
